Multitenant B2B2C platform for salon-quality beauty supplies distributor
Location: United Kingdom
Industry: E-commerce
About the project
Client and Product
One of the fastest-growing US-based B2B2C sales automation platform providers for retail businesses. The company aims to ensure a neoteric sales management and processing experience for its retail industry clients.
Challenges
The ultimate mission was to build a simple-to-use yet bilateral (user’s frontend & admin’s backend), scalable, and personalized multitenant marketplace for retailers. Any retailer willing to join the marketplace must have been able to do so within a matter of days and get a custom-built website with all data integrated with the marketplace data. Another difficulty that the numerous stakeholders involved in the trading process posed was ensuring the efficiency of financial transactions and equitable income distribution within the system.
The platform has had to track the customer leads and then redistribute the client’s payment between the parties stipulated in advance, as per the platform’s referral system. Furthermore, the system was meant to help retailers count their taxes, so the marketplace members would be able to focus on their core business instead of dealing with constant calculations.
Job Done
The AppRecode team has taken a comprehensive approach to the platform’s design, development, and rollout into production. A simple-to-use UI/UX combined with a tech stack tailored to ensure the product’s fastest time to market, innovative QA approach, and refined cloud infrastructure have irreversibly altered our client’s business model for the better.
AppRecode stood by our partner during negotiations with the 3rd-party service providers. We ensured a comprehensive scope of integrations embedded into the platform and developed the platform’s technology and cloud architecture.
The Stripe payment system integrated with the platform’s data and algorithms now ensures a fair and automated income distribution between the parties, including the distributor, retail salons, and our client – the platform owner. The TaxJar integration smoothes the tax calculation process, rendering the business conduction experience easier and more pleasant, thus luring more retailers to join the platform.
Our output ensured that the project’s pilot phase was crowned with unprecedented success. It is possible to provide new distributors with personalized platforms within 1-2 days. Hence, our client plans to onboard other salon chains and embark upon further extension of the platform itself.
Implemented features
Comprehensive Discovery Phase and Migration Planning
AppRecode began with an in-depth discovery phase to understand the client’s infrastructure, business goals, and technical needs. Collaborating closely with stakeholders, we identified challenges and crafted a detailed migration plan to transition from Elastic Beanstalk EC2-based services to AWS Amazon Kubernetes Service. This plan included a thorough Work Breakdown Structure, ensuring meticulous planning and execution. Our exhaustive upfront analysis minimized risks and ensured a smooth transition, laying a solid foundation for development and deployment.
Dockerization of Applications and Kubernetes Deployment
We dockerized all applications, encapsulating each into its own Docker container for consistency across development, testing, and production environments. Utilizing Kubernetes, we orchestrated these containers within a microservices architecture, enhancing scalability and reliability. This approach allowed seamless deployment and management, enabling the platform to handle over one million requests per hour. The strategy improved performance and reduced deployment times, speeding up time-to-market for new features and updates.
Infrastructure as Code Implementation Using Terraform
Implementing Infrastructure as Code with Terraform, we defined and managed the entire infrastructure through code. This enabled version control, collaboration, and automated provisioning, eliminating manual configuration errors and ensuring consistency. Terraform’s declarative language simplified reviewing and auditing changes, enhancing security and compliance. This IaC approach facilitated rapid scaling and streamlined the deployment of new environments, boosting operational efficiency.
Establishment of a Highly Automated CI/CD Pipeline with GitLab CI
We set up a highly automated Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment environment using GitLab CI. This pipeline automated the building, testing, and deployment of code changes, ensuring rapid and reliable delivery of new features and fixes. Automated testing caught issues early, improving code quality and reducing production risks. The CI/CD setup enhanced team collaboration, as code changes were continuously integrated and tested, accelerating the release cycle and enhancing platform stability.
Integration of Payment and Tax Systems
To enhance functionality and user experience, we integrated Stripe for payment processing and TaxJar for tax calculations. Stripe enabled automated and fair income distribution among distributors, retail salons, and the platform owner, based on predefined algorithms. This streamlined financial transactions and ensured transparency. TaxJar simplified tax computations, automatically calculating and remitting taxes per the latest regulations. Handling these complex processes within the platform allowed retailers to focus on their core business, attracting more users to the marketplace.
Performance Optimization Through Load Testing and DataDog Monitoring
We conducted extensive load testing and optimization to ensure the platform could handle high traffic and deliver a seamless user experience. Working closely with the development team, we identified performance bottlenecks and implemented tuning strategies for both application code and infrastructure. We integrated DataDog for comprehensive monitoring and logging, using its Application Performance Monitoring (APM) capabilities to gain deep insights into system behavior. Proactive monitoring allowed us to detect and address issues before they impacted users, ensuring high availability and reliability. This enabled the platform to successfully handle over one million requests per hour.
Outcomes
Our partner has decided to invest in a platform that lets distributors sell directly to their consumers via a network featuring more than 1.8 million business clients, owning an extensive retail clientele base. AppRecode has approached by the client in the middle of December and it took us less than two weeks to summon the team and start performing. We took the responsibility to implement, roll out, and provide ongoing support of the platform during its launch for its pilot client.
We have accomplished the project by the end of February 2021, as we spent the ongoing month providing additional features that were meant to extend the platform’s functionality. As of the end of March 2021, the pilot store is fully operational, as we’re working on the platform’s extension.
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Dmitry Fonarev
CEO and Founder of “Kubeshop” Company
AppRecode has been instrumental in helping us build community-driven solutions and generate ideas for future products. Their team is highly responsive and professional, and most members are certified in at least one cloud platform. Working with AppRecode has been a seamless experience, and their expertise in DevOps as a Service has significantly contributed to the progress of our project. We recommend Apprecode and look forward to continued cooperation.